


Heaven Help Us

by InLoveAndSqualor



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom - Freeform, M/M, MCR
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:25:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLoveAndSqualor/pseuds/InLoveAndSqualor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank knows he shouldn't... Knows he'll live to regret, revealing his true feelings to Gerard. But he can't stop himself... He can't stop this all from happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. C1 Heaven Help Us

Frank stumbled drunkenly down the corridor within the cheap motel he and his band mates had been staying in for the past few unwelcome nights. 

A horrible little place. Dingy rooms that just silently scream 'I've been a murder scene'; whose wallpaper may or may not have been splattered in blood at one time but definitely now seemed to be fleeing down the walls as if genuinely trying to escape this hell hole. And honestly Frank didn't blame it. God knows what these rooms had seen over the years, every kind of vice sated, the seven deadly sins of man found and somehow surpassed. These kind of dilapidated places just feel like that don't they? Feel like a place a man can sink to the depths befitting the décor.

All Frank's room had witnessed since he'd arrived was him sinking with disgust and reluctance on to his staunch looking bed in drunken solitude. And now tonight he conceded ruefully that he was set to do the same. 

As he made his way further and further into the decaying environment of falsely created comfort, his every action was a testament to the amount he'd drank that night. The alcohol that was supposed to numb and suppress was dangerously close to making him reckless, careless; and strangely soaked in emotion. And that really was the worst thing that it could possibly do right now. Now when he had this loaded gun in his pocket, a note primed and ready to go off in his hands. It had be written in a dubious moment of heartfelt honesty, and it felt like a three week old ticking time bomb. A three week all inclusive 'whenever you're ready' one way ticket to hell.

How could he do this again? All those hours in that faceless local bar, they were regrettable and inevitable and the only way he'd known how recently to spend his evenings. He'd come to feel like a regular, nodding at the same sad old figures as he walked in, watching them drinking themselves into oblivion, slowly becoming one and the same.

And he couldn't stop himself from getting this drunk, decide not to do it, even when he had that note burning a gaping cavernous hole in his pocket. That note in his pocket felt no more real than the carelessness in his mind. Although he'd created it three weeks ago, it still whispered sweet nothings to him beside the bittersweet reminders of its thankless existence. Like a twisted lover it betrays him, plays with him. It tells him love letters are meant to be seen. Wordlessly and hourly it begged for him to touch it, to read it, to remember how and why it was there in existence, by his side and rooted deep in his mind. 

He knew why he was drunk again, because this place invited it, insisted upon it. It's purpose taunted him, a place built for couples staying together, wrapped tightly around one another for the night, travelling businessmen pausing here for respite on the long trek home to their family, thoughts of their loved ones never far from their minds. Incredulously this place claimed to be a place of life, of people with people; and dismayed Frank thought everyone but him was buying the lie. But then to them all, as awful and decaying as this place was, it didn't matter because they had the thought and comfort of each other. Frank had no one. But it was more than that, it was worse than that. Frank didn't have him, Frank didn't have Gerard.

A few more inebriated steps along the corridor before, as they rehearsed night and night before, that door smiled lazily at him through the dim light laying upon them, the door to Gerard's room these past nights. It forced a nausea straight through Frank and a quiet ache in his chest. Why should the thought of him there, beyond, in that room, so very close but so impossibly far away, stir in him this aching, like his happiness so depended on the others being near? The thought that he slept so delicately, so easily in that bed, surrounded and among ghosts of the memories of it's countless previous occupants, made that room seem like an impossibly different world from the one further down the hall that Frank reluctantly occupied. He knew Gerard would be in there beyond sleeping just like an angel, hair messily curled around his features, eyelashes fluttering gently in R.E.M. His discarded clothes would be a bundle of black on the dusty carpet, the cool sheets would undoubtedly be brushing against his pale warm skin as he turned restlessly. Would the rise and fall of his chest be hypnotic? Would his lips be parted in the heavy breaths of sleep? 

_Okay, enough Frank. Get a grip._

Frank leaned unsteadily against the wall behind him and grimaced slightly at the sensation of the greasy feel of it's surface embracing the backs of his arms. Glancing briefly for signs of life, Frank fumbled in his pockets for his cigarettes and lighter and indulged himself guiltily despite the 'no smoking' signs plastered about in their garish colours, standing out harshly against the time washed, and grime muted, colours of the surrounding décor.

The note. The note, that since it's fated creation had been all too painfully apparent dwelling in his pocket, was now silently calling out to him, calling out at this awful opportunity. Frank had no idea why he'd been carrying it around for so long. The logical answer would be to say it was for his protection, to keep his secrets just that. But that just wasn't true. He couldn't lie to himself and he knew that if he didn't want his truths to unfold and unfurl before him, like the motion as he opened the letter in his hands, he would have destroyed it as soon as he'd recklessly created it. Even now he could destroy the damn thing so that even he could enjoy the lie that it had never existed. But he can't and he knows he won't. Because he's started all this in motion and a train can't move anywhere but along its own tracks. 

It felt more like a desperate act of masochism, always having it with him, than a precaution. A little torture he'd brought and exacted upon himself. If the mental agony of his frustrated feelings wasn't enough, he had a physical symbol of it all. It was like just knowing how he felt wasn't enough he had to manifest it into something tangible and terrible to inflict upon himself. 

Frank absentmindedly ran his fingers along the paper's folded edges, and for a moment it was that blade he'd pictured in his mind. It just was.

Distractedly Frank took a luxuriant drag on his cigarette and found he enjoyed the sensation of smoke slowly taking up the inches of his lungs, warming his soul and consuming his air. Thank god for his little indulgences.

 _I wonder what he's dreaming of? There's not a hope that it's ever been me..._ His thoughts betrayed.

The thought of what could be there in that room was twisting in his mind; becoming a temple, a shrine to his friend, a monument to his devastating beauty, his countless cruel charms. He felt so impossibly far away and yet he was just there beyond that door. And the scene Frank imagined was both wonderful and devastating, just like the object of all his desires. And isn't it true that beauty admired but never touched is the cruellest kind? It just wasn't enough to know that Gerard was his friend.; it just wasn't at all enough.

Frank leaned more desperately into the wall behind him, the preciousness he had felt about the motel's general hygiene becoming lost in thoughts of love and suffering; his past awareness of it felt like an almost entirely absurd concern now. He watched layers of ash birthed from his burning cigarette gather and fall; joining the already abundant and varied detritus visibly littering the floor. 

Falling leaves and broken dreams he thinks briefly before finding himself pining for the sanctity and purity of the outdoors, the clean cool air and nature's open arms. Here the stale atmosphere was oppressive, he felt like he was standing in one of Dante's imagined circles of hell. And could even he have imagined this torture?

All hope abandon, ye who enter here… He muses, sadly remembering that he already had long ago. Hope of the touch of happiness, hope at the strange wonders of a mind and a heart at peace. Or was it just the hope that he could just forget? He wanted so desperately to forget, to leave things neatly and un-destroyed as they are. But how could he hold himself back?

_There's too much peril in desire. He felt meekly and clearly. And a strange comfort born from destruction._

Suffocating in the airless hall, and finding he'd lost the will to try to breathe, he pulls the folded symbol of all his reckless hopes and dreams, from his pocket, and turns it in his hands. As if touched by some alchemy it's surface imparts upon him flashes of it's reckless creation. 

On tour, countless towns even states before he'd had to do it; as if the pen and paper had found and instructed him and the pleas and devotion recorded were from some divine inspiration. He couldn't stop forming the inky black words against the then thin and crisp snow white paper. He looks at it now, browning and crumpled and memory stained. It wounds him that it's not what it was before, something earnest and pure, evidence of a helpless act of quiet desperation. Now it's cruel and it taunts and it dares him to act. And he was never good with those imagined battles in his mind and in his heart; it was always that darkest part of his psyche that shouts the loudest, the most reckless thoughts in his mind stain the longest. 

He helplessly wishes he could somehow ground himself in reality but everything feels unreal. And that lack of imagined consequence would just make it all the easier to take the note humming beneath his fingertips, and slide it beneath the door before him as it were nothing. He tries to tell himself its not nothing, he tells himself he needs to feel the importance of his actions especially tonight, when he can't stop the world swaying and the dryness in his mouth from deepening. No stupid deed goes unpunished in this world. And he feels all this seems uncomfortably close to actually considering it. Could he now in this impaired state even comprehend what that could mean? Right now it all feels so childish and how small had he felt writing down his feelings, impotently trying to take some kind, any kind, of action; trying to find a feeling of control within it all. And it should have been cathartic, and he should have been able to write it and let it go. Burn it, toss it, anything but keep the damn thing. But something made him keep it, something made it impossible to discard. There was an importance about it when he had so desperately created it, invested himself in it, poured out his heart and soul.

Frank blinked absently at the burnt out remains of his cigarette and asked himself what it was he thinks he's doing here and why he already knew this'll only end one way. Apathy fills him when he discovers that already he had decided he would do it; and it shocks him that the admission brings only an acceptance of the future deed as an absolute fact. Tossing carelessly aside his cigarette butt he takes one last look at the tainted paper. He'd like to say, as he staggered over to that door and slipped guiltily the tome of his desires under the dark silent gap beneath, that he'd been in the thralls of a drunken madness or that after the act regret and trepidation had taken a ceaseless hold. He'd like to say that were true. But he couldn't. As he bent down and watched it disappear into the darkness of a sleeping room he felt nothing at all, no epiphany, no sense of dread. All that struck him was the blanket of numbness and apathy, the complete lack of a moment either beautiful or terrible. It felt like nothing, nothing he had expected, and nothing at all.

And when it was done he just stared blankly at the locked threshold before him, and then down at his hands that shook and looked so strange without the note within them. And he told himself there should be relief or regret in his heart where all that absence stood. An all encompassing relentless feeling of just this absence of anything at all.

After willing for what felt like hours for panic or relief, hope or helplessness, he gave up and turned away; the tips of his fingers brushing along the cool wood of the door, over the glossed surface of its frame and finally lifting off at the nauseating feel of the tainted papered wall.

Finally he let his head drop, a sigh echoing in his ears, and ambled solemnly back to his terrifyingly empty room.

***

Six hours later, nursing a hangover and the sobering sting of horror and regret, Frank stood amongst his band mates desperately trying to occupy himself in their sound check. The guitar beneath his touch felt heavy and alien. He felt nothing of the elegance and poise that he imagined he held with his instrument in his hands; any sense of it felt destroyed. He knew his preoccupation must be obvious and paranoia made him feel as if his actions of the night before were there painted across his face. Oddly he noted Gerard had been his normal cool self, swaggering confidently across the stage, conducting his mic check as if it were as important and admirable as heart surgery. 

Frank was looking forward to sinking some beers, perhaps something a little stronger, before their imminent performance; and he would need it. He needed to do something to get himself in the zone and quiet his chattering brain, and this wasn't it. He listened half-heartedly back to the notes his fingers mapped out stiffly, returning one guitar to its stand before moving reluctantly to his next; slightly pleased that he did in fact have something constructive to justify his thoughtful silence. And although he knew he couldn't make this activity last much longer, he willed it go on for just a few moments more.

***

Backstage and outwardly anxious Frank buttons his shirt and smoothes down the front with sweating palms before an obviously neglected full length mirror. He watches the image reflected behind himself of Gerard lazily sipping from a drink with a smug expression plastered across his face.

"Hey Frank," he hollers across the room as Mikey brushes past apparently looking for some lost item of his wardrobe.

Frank feels as if his heart has suddenly stopped but he keeps his lips neatly in a smile before reluctantly connecting his gaze, with Gerard's eyes reflected in the mirror, and nodding mutely.

"You know… I think our cover's been blown," he says flatly as a grimly startled Frank tries to detect any subtext to his words.

Gerard routes around in his pockets nonchalantly before producing Frank's note in an overly dramatic flourish.

Frank raises a carefully controlled eyebrow and turns around, reaching over for his belt, refusing to let his eyes wander, as he threads it through the loops of his pants, away from his friend's impossibly blank face.

"Yeah… I must've got this through my door last night, I guess," he says unfolding the paper, smoothing out firmly its countless creases over his knee.

Frank feels his mask slipping, struggles to conjure that precious control he'd barely held in the first place.

Gerard clears his throat as the others in the room turn, their interest piqued by the odd exchange unfolding behind them.

"How can I say this without it sounding contrived, contrite? Without this losing all its meaning? How can I say words like 'I love you' when they're used everyday and in so many careless ways. They don't reflect the magnitude of how this feels. Because I love you Gerard Way in countless intricate and odd ways. And I ask myself so often how is it that you're my world and yet you're the stars and the sun and everything in between? Effortlessly you took apart my life and torched my soul. And sometimes it feels like my existence depends on the curve of your smile. Does it matter to you that I'm nothing without you, nothing compared to you? I know as you read this that you'll guess that this pen is on the verge of shaking right out of my hand? It's the thought of you because I know you're reading this…" Gerard makes a bored gesture with his hand to indicate that the letter goes on for some time longer; and with a self satisfied smile he screws up the note and tosses it in the trashcan a short distance from where he proudly sits.

"And that's just an excerpt," he smirks shaking his head in a show of mock disdain.

Frank, his heart in his mouth, stares horrified at the discarded record of every aching feeling he dared to pour out. He's lost control of his once awkwardly calm features, and for those who would look they must have given him completely away.

"Wow," Mikey laughs, finally retrieving the tie he'd been hunting for and rests it over his shoulder.

"Wow indeed," Gerard smiles coolly at Frank.

And Frank hated himself for how seductive he thought Gerard looks being quietly cruel.

Silence fills the room and hums in his ears; settles upon his shoulders and feels as if it might at any moment pull him down to hell.

"I never know how the fans do it… How they always find out where we are," Gerard states in a manner oddly devoid of emotion.

"Fans…" Frank echoes involuntarily, before realising his slip and pursing his lips together self-consciously.

"But they always do… Find out where we are. Don't they Frank," Gerard persists.

"Yeah…" Frank mumbles distractedly, Gerard's eyes boring a hole into his forehead; dark glittering eyes filled with cruelty and sex, intention and intensity.


	2. C2 Heaven Help Us

Frank slammed his room key down on the battered bedside table, in his by now utterly sickening motel room.

He couldn't dispel the hopeless anger that picked its way through his mind and forced itself out in his every moment.

The image of Gerard's devastating hazel eyes emblazoned upon his mind was driving him mad, filling him helplessly with vitriol. Involuntarily his fists clenched; he felt truly as if this hurt and humiliation could eat him whole.

He wrenched open the squat mini-bar and scooped out the contents into his arms; dumping them onto the bed behind him. Foolishly he hoped that draining them would, in some infinitesimal way, help. At least it would be a distraction for some blissful moments, before the thoughts of reality again plagued his mind. And the idea brought some relief.

In the long run he knew he'd just be adding to his long list of appalling and relentless mistakes.

 _Just watch me fall._ Came to his mind as he twisted off the first cap knowing full well it wouldn't be the last.

The hours ticked by evidenced by the scattered accumulation of drained bottles laying discarded like trees felled in some violent storm. 

Letting himself fall back on his bed was like falling into a dream, a nightmare; he wrapped his arms around himself. He knew he was giving his whole self over to the pain coursing through him, and to him it felt as if it grew and spilled out, radiated off the battered walls and returned back to embed itself deeper inside his heart.

Thinking of Gerard a distaste tainted his senses just as strongly as the unpleasant cocktail of hard liquor that still lingered on his tongue.

"Gerard," he whispered bitterly, as an unwelcome tear blurred his vision and greeted his cheek.

_I'm in love with a man who gets his kicks from my public torture. Who could hurt someone he knows is so lost in his love for him? And he knew it, he knew I was drowning…_

He told himself he'd never forget the cold calculated gleam in Gerard's eye as he turned the screws, as he completed the private, and yet so awfully public, humiliation. The pleasure he'd taken in Frank's fear of exposure had so obviously taken his senses over like a drug.

He asked himself how could he love him? How could he take this, and still feel the same? And though love was there around the peripherals it was hate that shook his body so and invaded the remaining expanse of his mind. He'd never felt so lost in the ugly feel of it, he had never felt so unlike himself.

_Nothing like a dose of pain to make you forget who you are._

Frank swallowed the contents of another miniature before getting lost in the way the murky late night light refracted and gleamed and winked right back at him from its surface. 

_Beauty is buried in the most mundane of things…_

His hands trembling, he launched the empty bottle into the air and watched with little satisfaction as it bloomed into a thousand tiny vicious shards against the wall before him.

Finding no solace in destruction, Frank wondered what it would be to slip completely into despair.

A quiet knock roused him from the ensuing darker thoughts, and he called out a reluctant 'yes' to the unwelcome intrusion. The coldness of his voice was so unexpected and alien to him that it was almost frightening.

When the knock came again he seethed with the irritation that only one disturbed from absolute self-indulgence can feel.

As he rose to answer the door the bed below him did its best to drag him back. His limbs resisted and cried, in the grips of drink's fatigue. But this was the only way, he reasoned, he could eventually find peace.

Shaking his head incredulously at the hand that trembled before him on the doors knob, the reticence in his every inch making it near impossible to turn. As he did so, he didn't know who or what he expected to see. But what he did hadn't even for second entered the darkest corners of his mind.

They say misery loves company… Well there Gerard stood. 

Misery and company all at once.

***

"Can I come in?" Gerard asked, lazily surveying the room beyond Frank, as he stood proudly at the threshold.

"Would you go if I said no?" Frank sighed turning away and back to the dishevelled bed; leaving Gerard to click the door quietly behind him and make his own way into the dim and claustrophobia of the room.

"No," he laughed. "I guess not."

Gerard's expression was far from discernable in this light and that made Frank all the more uneasy. An overbearing sense of trepidation and anxiety fell upon him and worked its way across his chest.

It pained him to watch Gerard's silhouette make its way across the room and pause at the pile of broken glass laying on the floor across from him. Did the little shards whisper words to him of their creation? Frank winced at the thought of Gerard's knowing smile upon discovering them.

"Look what do you want?" Frank snapped as a response to the thought, he didn't want Gerard to discover another solitary thing about him. Secrets are such for a reason he told himself, he'd risked too much already and this is what it had got him.

Franks tortured thoughts tangled and roared to the surface and he struggled to keep them from rushing out of his shuddering lips.

"Earlier… You know, that wasn't funny." They blurted out, betraying him.

"I don't think I was laughing," he replied coolly, flatly; still making his graceful way around the room.

"No I guess you weren't, you weren't doing that at all," Frank snapped angrily pulling his pack of cigarettes closer to him from across the sheets.

"In fact, I don't think you did anything that would show you have a single normal human emotion in you." He stated trying to make it just that, an emotionless observation; his face draining white at the realisation he was involuntarily squashing the cigarette packet within his grasp.

"And tell me, why don't you Frank, how I should have been for you? Did I not live up to what you dreamed?" He replied; his cool flat tone slightly, but almost imperceptibly, faltering.

Frank was shocked by the resentment and pain, that anyone but him would have been unlikely to detect, woven into the fabric of Gerard's response. 

"Don't try to turn this around on me," he replied, the vengeful anger within him impossible to quash now; making him dismiss the fact that his friend was as conflicted and as hurt as he had become. 

He unfurled the packet within his hands and retrieved a desperately needed, but woeful looking, cigarette. He winced in recognition at the visibly shaking lighter he had picked up in tired fingers.

As he lit up the flint sparked and the gas roared into flame, and it startled him to observe that Gerard stood intently staring into his features as it did so; taking this opportunity to drink in and study every faint appearance of an expression he could detect upon Frank's tiring countenance. 

"I'm no good at this shit," Gerard remarked bitterly, throwing himself down in the tired chair by the door, his wrist resting reluctantly on the hopelessly frayed upholstery of its arm rest.

"Earlier… It was no big deal," he offered. "I just wanted to… I don't know, I guess I just wanted some kind of reaction." 

Frank's fury, that he had had barely within his control before, flared and burned like the lighter, still sitting within his hand, had moments before.

"Well here's your reaction Gerard. Is it what you hoped?" Burst forth from Frank's lips, involuntarily, but in a way that felt like he was being set free. "You know something, nothing's a big fucking deal to you. Because you're Gerard fucking Way and nothing matters does it? The only problem is that all this it's a big deal to me." 

Frank took a purposeful and long drag on his cigarette, staring at it balanced between his fingers, he looked at it, he knew, far longer than he should, but it was all he could do to avoid Gerard's devastating gaze and the chance of catching his reaction.

"You know Gerard… Please just go. If even part of you wants to make this right, then just go." Frank finally managed to say and he knew if he weren't so angry he would have been on the edge of tears.

He hated himself for that; truly he did, he hated himself for the thought that he could cry for this man, cry for what he still meant to him.

"I don't get this," he protested. "I don't get you at all."

Frank laughed caustically; again shocking himself to the point of shame.

"You don't get people Gerard. And that's your problem. How did you think this was going to go. Coming here after what you did to me. And expecting what? Understanding? Even sympathy?" Frank answered, before anger faded into bitterness and apathy.

"You can't punish people for loving you Gerard," he sighed sadly.

Frank looked ashamedly at his hands that still refused to quiet, knowing that he had already softened, he had already begun to put Gerard's feelings before his own again. 

And Frank felt sadly that Gerard would never love him in the same way he did him. When he knew that Gerard couldn't even bring himself to respect him because of it.

Frank watched the bittersweet moment unfolding before him as Gerard, wracked with a bruising realisation, looked down at his palms open before him slowly bringing his fingers together in a fist and unfurling them again.

He glanced briefly at Frank before he dropped them to his sides and made his way swiftly out the door.

***

For the next few hours Frank thought of Gerard and drank. The night seemed so filled with the subtleties of sorrow; and it was as if his fractured psyche had broken free of his mind and splashed itself indelibly upon the very landscape of the room.

He began to realise his plan to drink away his pain, and that catastrophically beautiful face, was utterly misguided. Gerard was with him now more than ever. 

It was as if the chill down Frank's spine was from Gerard running his cool slender finger along it.

He pulled himself uneasily off the bed and felt drinks grasping hands, not for the first time recently, try to drag him back down. 

At least the room's not spinning as much anymore he thought to himself, nevertheless realising that although things aren't that bad, they were pretty close.

And when the idea of sleep struck him he greeted it with the same disinterest he had everything else since Gerard had made a spectacle of the most precious thing he had held in his heart. He felt nothing but the pain of the moment his devotion and love for him had been crushed beneath the weight of Gerard's cruel hands. 

Running his listless palm over the sheet below, he watched with disinterest, as the bottles, displaced by it, bounced away and ricocheted off the carpet and walls, smashing against each other and falling down dead to the ground.

***

They say, and who are they anyway? That things'll always look better in the morning. Well, Frank wincingly observed, they didn't.

His head still swam with the conflicting enemies of pain and indifference, his heart still felt as if he had a blade lodged deep within it; and if only he could just reach down and pull it out.

This was the indescribable level of pain only, the scourge that is, love could impart upon you.

Gerard was still an indelible blot on Frank's mind, but with the single-mindedness alcohol imposes removed, he thought also, somewhat flinchingly, of his band mates. He agonised over the horrific idea that they'd picked up on any of this, worked out what the backroom charade was really about. The idea stung at the core of him; and he had no one to blame but himself. He had exposed the secrets he had nurtured for so long within himself, he'd risked it all and come out burnt. And for what?

Was it really such a burden to keep that most awful of thoughts just that, a thought trapped in his mind? And now that he had lost the anonymity of his feelings, he truly felt like a part of himself was ebbing away.

All he'd achieved was to paint across his most precious of loves a sense of futility, a once treasured dream to believe in had become broken, a burnt out wreck. It was to him a skeleton of what it had once been, lying there within his mind. A reminder, a corpse of something that had been so pure and so earnest, now tainted with the acrid touch of reality.

Reluctantly Frank rose from the bed, aiming to wash away the grime of past events and the smell of drink that was draped all over him making him nauseous every time it rose up to taunt him.

He made himself head to the tiny bathroom, that had been built shoddily and somewhat awkwardly into the corner of the room. Robotically he turned the taps on the bath tub, that it seemed was also making do as a shower. He felt the cool metal under his fingers threaten to lift the sleepy haze still cushioning his mind, that had been mercifully making all of this feel not quite so real.

Hot water rushed out above him and fell like acid rain; he involuntarily smiled as it bit at his forearm turning it a warmer shade.

He looked down despairingly at his crumpled shirt, at the knees of his jeans that were inexplicably coated in a fine layer of dust. And would anyone believe he'd been up all night praying? Ironically, Frank thought, he'd spent so many of his nights before this one lost in worship and the truest, most sincere, form of devotion.

He stared up at the gleaming torrent from the shower head and felt its purity beckoning him in. Gratefully he stepped over the porcelain edge of the tub and greeted the cool surface of its bottom under his bare feet.

The sensation of the warming water overthrew the thoughts of love and regrets that plagued his mind; and for this moment it was like being set free. He enveloped himself in the feeling of the tingling of his flesh as the water rushed over it. He felt as if it were surrounding him, protecting him and mercifully washing away all that had passed. 

The sound of it gushed over his head and down his back, filled his ears and calmed his pulse. He felt as if these sacred events might be enough to drown out the anger, the pain, the thoughts and wishes that blighted his every moment and threatened to engulf his very being and tear apart the rest of his shattered mind.

Incredibly he felt as if he might laugh aloud as the ravaging flow soaked his shirt and rushed through its fabric onto his flesh.

Frank wearily leant his palms on the tiles in front of him, decorated with a garish and dated pattern, and closed his eyes, concentrating on separating the feel of each drop of water that fell upon his neck and came together to cascade down his back; marchinging relentlessly down his torso. 

The relief was sublime, it was total peace being lost in the physical world; shutting off all other thoughts, when before he had been so stuck amongst the torture in his mind.

His shirt clung to his back and sides, and he took the time to concentrate on the sensory delight of a lone river of water that ran right down the middle of his chest; his body a ravine; his lungs beneath he could clearly feel slowing, calming, becoming a hypnotic motion within him. 

The fabric felt so alien upon him like this, a second skin. It was both a welcome protection and an unwanted barrier he longed to tear through. 

In the cramped bathroom, a place of questionable hygiene and normally little significance, Frank felt as if he could lose himself forever; just focus on every physical moment there in being alive and forget perpetually the rest of his thoughts as the detritus and mess of his consciousness mind.

The cool surface of the tiles he leant upon penetrated the tips of his fingers and made its way into his palms; he felt as if he could eternally revel in the contrasting feel of the hot heat, raining down upon his body, and the pleasing coolness under his touch. 

He forgot himself in the rhythm of the water drumming down upon his skin; a disparate melody he was sure was buried somewhere there in its incessant descent.

He guessed anything can be a distraction, and it felt like mercy to be completely lost amongst the feel of water rushing over him.

One last ephemeral joy before you need to face the world again, he told himself as he stood up straight under the water's force and ran his fingers through his drenched hair. Small rivers were birthed upon before meandering down his nose and over the delicate curves of his lips.

Frank for a moment thought that the water curling around his waist, on its way down to the plug, felt like the arms of someone dear holding him close, as if to say I can't let you go.

Frank shuddered involuntarily at the idea of it, horrified he leant down listlessly and turned the taps, shutting off the water.

I guess you can't ever escape completely, he thought despairingly, as the water running off and from his clothes made them stick to his skin unpleasantly, cooling almost instantly in the air.

Cold and alone every emotion he had blotted out came crashing back to him all at once, it was overwhelming to the point of complete devastation, it was so much more than his now frail mind could take.

He felt as ashamed and alone as he could only remember being before as a child. 

Hopelessly he sunk down, his knees pressed to his chest, his fingers meeting and lacing together over his head. Overwhelmed by the emotions crashing into him like tidal wave after tidal wave, he let his forearms press tightly over his ears, and embraced the sting of his elbows pressing deeply into his thighs.

He stayed paralysed and watched as the remains of his pride swirled away, escaping down the dark plug hole before him, through the blur of tear stained eyes.


	3. C3 Heaven Help Us

Frank stood wearily outside the diner, his familiar friend a cigarette balanced between reluctant lips, and studied the traditional All-American décor; the chalkboard proudly declaring that they served the best coffee that could be found in the state. Frank wondered briefly if anyone was out here looking for it...

All this dwelling on his surroundings was for a reason; they were a desperate attempt at avoiding the inevitable and stepping in. A subconscious act perhaps but still undeniable. He couldn't lie to himself, he just didn't want to go in there. It was more than seeing the guys again, more than seeing Gerard, after last nights events that had descended upon their usually carefully controlled appearance of mutual calm. It was the thought of being surrounded by all those strangers in one very public place that seemed unbearably daunting. It seemed pathetic to him to feel like this, when standing on stage in front of hundreds of fans only nights before had seemed like a breeze. He thought it funny how things change you so swiftly and so definitely and yet at the time you don't seem to notice a thing. Frank asked himself that, in a matter of hours, could you be a different person?

He felt awkward and pitiable as he made his way closer, gravel crunching underfoot, the sun, high in the sky, mercilessly blinding his eyes.

Frank tossed his half-smoked cigarette aside solemnly and braced himself for the horror he saw ahead.

As he swung the door open the bell, fixed over it, chimed to announce his entrance and in his head it was like an awful blaring fanfare; asking everyone inside to turn around, and look at this spectacle. The comforting smell of grass baking in the sun and summer breezes gave way to the richness of fresh roasted coffee and just-cooked cherry pies.

Frank glanced up reticently to locate his band mates amongst the throng of bodies and voices; and found them easily. An instantly recognisable gathering of black amongst all the plaid-clad locals. Gratefully he snapped his eyes back down to the sticky linoleum floor.

Weaving between tables Frank decided to avoid for now analysing why all this was so hard; the meaning behind his unease, his discomfort. The way he couldn't bear to meet a strangers eyes. Tearing his mind away from self-consciousness, he forced it to focus on the now, the real, the physical; centred on how his fringe fell across his face. The hypnotic brushing of hairs across the bridge of his nose. With relief Frank found that settling his thoughts on their movements allowed him to quash his ardent desire to just run.

"Hey Frank," he heard to his right in an oddly distant and muffled voice; to Frank it felt kind of like he were trapped in a bubble, as if all this was a lasting remnant of a dream.

Two firm hands clamped around his shoulders and pulled him down amongst his friends and into a red faux-leather clad booth.

As the usual greetings and pleasantries swelled up and filled the air, Frank looked away, gazed at the white and red plastic floor tiles. Felt stupid in this vain attempt to hide from them all his darkening mood; trying to avoid Gerard's compellingly cool stare, that he just knew would be there to greet him. As it always was.

Fearing, out of some invading paranoia, that they'd all see why he was so desperate not to look up; Frank made a vain and weak attempt to appear to look for a waitress. Anything to avoid his friends, avoid facing the inevitable.

"You seen Gerard?" He heard Mikey call across to him over the diners chatter.

Before he could take in what he was asked, and it's true meaning, a waitress sauntered over to their table, a pot of coffee clutched in a tired hand. Frank shook his head slowly, as a no to Mikey, it was all he could manage to conjure as a reaction. He hadn't realised at all that someone, that Gerard, was missing from their numbers. So fearful of actually facing him, he'd missed entirely his absence. He felt absurd; he felt relieved.

Quietly Frank accepted his coffee, flickering his eyes between the steaming flow of hot dark liquid pouring into his cup, to the red embossed 'Norma' inscribed on the waitresses white, and red framed, name badge.

"He's gone Frank... Just took off I guess. Front desk said he checked out this morning," Mikey continued, almost imperceptibly, anxiously.

Frank reached over tentatively for the sugar dispenser, clutched it between pale fingers that simply refused to help him out and not shake; as the chatter of the diner swelled mercilessly in his ears, preventing any hope of him compiling an answer. A thousand reactions greeted him and flew by. He just couldn't bring himself to move his lips.

"Look... I'm sure he's okay Mikes," Bob chimed in over the throng of voices. "I know you're worried, but your brother... He is a grown man. Isn't he?"

Frank cradled the sugar between his anxious fingers, focused on the cool solidity of its form and the surface beneath his fingertips.

'Always trying to lose yourself in a moment, just to avoid what's really going on around it,' he chided himself angrily; asking why, if he knew these things, couldn't he stop them?

"It's not like we have another show tonight," Ray offered up, in a show of cheerful positivity. "He'll either show up before we hit the road again, or at the next town."

"Hey maybe he met up with that stalker fan of his!" He grinned lavishly at his words, as everyone around him, accept Frank, lightened. He just couldn't force his lips up into a smile, couldn't turn on a persona as much as he tried. He just hoped his general despair would come across as concern.

It was crazy, he thought, the one person he'd taken all those pains to avoid in those moments before he knew, and he wasn't even there. He hadn't even given himself the chance to look up and notice. Frank couldn't help but feel a pang of concern at the news, but it was utterly overwhelmed by the wave of relief washing over him; as guilty as that made him feel.

'But this can't last forever,' he told himself. 'Our lives are so indelibly linked. And he'll always be there, somehow. All these things I cherished, our ties, they're unbearable tortures now... The fact that we're always there in each other's worlds, I want to wash it all away...' 

"I'll see you all on the bus," Falls out of Frank's lips as he rises, his palms pushing down on the table before him, helping him up, felt like they were being sucked down in to its surface. 

The words felt something beyond what should have been his own. He was on autopilot, and it was all he could do to save himself from being a part of this, feeling life and its events. If he started to participate, he felt somewhere within him, then all the emotions he had held down with aching hands, might spring up and overtake him, in some awful, all consuming revolution. He feared them, his feelings. Just as a cancer grows and multiplies within a person, living off its host, eventually killing them in the end, just by the act of being, killing the very thing it needed to live within... Well that's how his emotions felt to him. That dangerous, that vicious; if he ever let them grow. It was all he could do not to lose himself.

As he rose a chorus of agreements, replies and goodbyes chattered forth; but even then he was already gone from there. Like his ghost had to stay to wait for their answers.

****

Frank crushed the handwritten note, the guy at the motel's front desk had handed him, and threw it distractedly into the lobby's lone trashcan.

'Gone ahead. See you at the next show,' is all it read.

****

Another town brought another depressingly similar motel. Frank despaired how you can move from town to town and end up, what felt like, staring at the same four grim walls as before.

He glanced over at his yet unpacked bags and considered how easy it'd be to just stroll over there and pick them up. Just pick them up and run out on all this.

But you can't run out on love, on obsession. Frank couldn't kid himself that running away, changing his scenery, his love, his obsession, hopeless thoughts of Gerard wouldn't be there with him too.

Frank sighed and pulled himself to his feet. Strolled over to his jacket, strewn over the seat of the tired looking chair by the door, and rummaged in his pockets to retrieve a sorry looking packet of cigarettes. Frustrated, he crushed it in his hands, as he realised it was empty; tossing it into the ugly squat little trashcan by his bed, and missing wildly. Frank sighed, despaired at the thought of having to leave his torturous sanctuary. He pulled on his jacket and felt in his pockets for his room key that still lay there safe amongst the other debris. Reluctantly he turned the door's latch and braced himself for the artificial strip lights of the motel's hall, for all those depressing doors, hiding all the little cells crammed into the building, all the same, all as tragic as his.

Frank swung the door open and almost walked straight into the slumped figure resting its arm on the door's outer frame, blocking the threshold.

"Gerard," Frank sighed in a mix of irritation and weariness.

Gerard didn't look up; his hair obscured his eyes as it fell across his face, elegant and yet on the verge of tangled. The only clue Frank could find to his mood were his lips that sat below, pursed in uneasy thought.

Frank waited for the person before him to look up, to talk, to move, anything but stay there stuck static and menacing in the grim shadows.

Suddenly Gerard's hand rose up to reveal a neatly folded note held, precariously, between his thumb and forefinger.

"Wanted to give you this..." He said finally in a voice oddly lost to ennui and melancholy. 

Frank's mind raced with the many possible situations that could be unfolding before him; every single possibility seemed awful, seemed devastating.

Was this another one of Gerard's cruel jokes? Or could Frank dare to dream that Gerard had written to Frank a note of his own. Nothing that he considered was even close to the truth.

Gerard brought the note up closer to Frank, willed for him to take it. 

Wordlessly Frank reached over for the paper in his friend's grasp and unfolded it with hands that refused to quiet, that shook to the point of alarm. There, shivering from the motion, revealed, was his note to Gerard; returning to him like some torture that would never leave him, he could never run from.

Gerard had retrieved it from the trash, had kept it with him; and Frank could tell that by showing him this, Gerard was trying to say something he knew his lips would never let him.

Wordlessly Gerard reached up and clasped his friend's face and forced their lips to meet; tumbled into him until they both fell back into the dim of the room.

Frank, shocked into submission, gave in to the invasion; felt, as he did, the warmth trapped in his friends mouth, the faint lasting traces of bourbon and cigarettes on his tongue. Mourned briefly the feeling of hot hands on him as Gerard reached back to close the door firmly behind him.

Together they stumbled and fell and Frank found the bed just as Gerard had found his fly. Frank tried and failed to force words past the lips pressed to his own; gave in when he felt Gerard run a hot tongue across his own.

Frank could feel that Gerard was shaking, every inch of his body was shaking against him; knew that the touches he gave out were manic and frenzied. Something in this was wrong and Frank knew, knew it but couldn't bring himself to acknowledge it, to stop it. He knew that it was more than just the taste of whiskey on Gerard's tongue that filled his senses, it was as if he were soaked in it, he stank of it.

When Gerard pulled away from their embrace to work on Frank's fly, it was all he could do to stare despairingly at the ceiling. It had felt for moments that he had got what he wanted; but the illusion had been so thin. He actually felt himself flinch as Gerard brought down his lips against his neck and littered it with hard wet kisses.

So much in this felt like being used; and yet it was so close. It was so close, to his dreams, that he could shut off the part of himself that was screaming. He could lose himself in the flimsily constructed lie. 

Frank ran his hands gratefully down the warm back of the man lying atop him; revelled in the way he weighed down on his hips; gasped as Gerard carelessly trailed kisses up his jaw and claimed once more his mouth.

Finally, his self-respect lost the fight with his needs, and he began to slowly unbutton Gerard's jeans; an ecstasy and an impatience surged through him as he gave in to the countless sensations in their moment together. Felt his head spin as his fingers finally released his friend and slowly wrapped around his warm waiting erection.

On that night Frank felt as though he might lose all sense of himself as Gerard painted the walls with great swathes and arcs of crimson and purple cries; might drown in the thick air, hot and heady with sex and lust; might never be able to forget the feeling of that other man's skin upon his own.

Frank felt all these wonderful feelings; and for the rest of the night never for a moment again let Gerard's eyes meet his own.


	4. C4 Heaven Help Us

Frank had fallen asleep in Gerard's arms but awoke in a mess of sheets, the room filled with the scents of sex and the sensation of his absence. He touched forlornly the cool pillow by his, ghosting across where Gerard's cheek had lain, only hours before, inches from his own.

The sun through the open drapes bathed his face with a felicitously warm glow. Although the memories that slowly flowed back into his mind, as the world gushing into the room gently brought him back to the living, seemed flimsy and unreal, he knew that they were true. He knew Gerard had been there, because he felt the moment he reached out to him and clutched his face come gliding back. He found the taste of Gerard's mouth upon his own and the sharp piercing pain in his heart from Gerard reaching in just to appease his own...

And although he could still conjure into his mind the raw, careless, touches of Gerard's assault, he couldn't find himself angry or bitter at him for it. Because blanketing over the hurt and the pain of it all was the gift of that moment Gerard had given them both. The memory of Frank's note stood shivering between Gerard's fingers was as fresh as the morning air beyond his window.

Frank glanced over to the door and saw it still there, unfolded on the carpet, just how it had fallen only hours before.

Gerard's low moans still sighing in his ears Frank rose to shower, refused to let all the doubts invading his mind conquer the peace that being with the one person that he loved had given him.

***

Frank made his way to that nights venue alone. Excitement and trepidation clashed inside him noisily, making his fingers twitch and play uneasily with the hem of his shirt.

His cab wound its way through the dark cramped backstreets, dim lights of backrooms and restaurant kitchens rolling past. As they pulled up by the backstage entrance Frank forced down the nervous nausea that threatened to crawl up his throat and take his body over.

As Frank reached into his pocket to pay the tired looking driver, he hoped the guy was near the end of his shift; tried to ignore, for a few seconds more, the looming bricks of the theatre to his side.

Frank stepped out into the cool half light, the uneasy glow of the exit signs over the door, pocketing his change he tried to imagine he was leaving his anxieties there with it.

When Frank reached their shared dressing room he found it empty, just the debris of his friends scattered all around him. He smiled at the chaos and disorder, shrugging his jacket off his shoulders and hanging it over the chair by the door next to one he recognised as Gerard's.

Frank realised then that he'd have to wait until after their sound check and most likely after their show until he'd have a chance to get Gerard alone. He knew it'd be all business for pretty much the rest of night, and all he wanted to do was stare into the cool glaciers of Gerard's eyes... If he could just do that he knew everything could be alright...

***

Frank had been happy with their performance that night. A wave of electric energy rushed through him and made itself known in the way he'd played, the way he threw himself around the stage; the music shuddering through his chest, winding its way pleasantly up and down his spine. And in the countless brazen moments Frank had strolled over to Gerard, fingers still moving frantically over the frets of his guitar and he'd let the man run his hands suggestively down his heaving chest, deep in those gestures Gerard would slip up and let Frank delve into those stunningly haunting eyes. Between sporting his showman's mask, Frank thought he saw a genuine and rare smile of contentment there within them.

***

Frank walked purposefully through the hall that led from the old venues small bar, where he's sunk a few beers with it's equally aging owner, to the backstage room where the band had made a kind of home for that night.

Frank had prepared himself for coming face to face with Gerard and it showed in the forcibly relaxed smile he sported and the tense quality to his gait.

With a withering confidence Frank turned the battered old doorknob of their room and strolled in, holding a shuddering breath.

Frank stumbled into a room that hummed with the energy of intimacy; two entangled bodies hot and swaying in the disparate shadows, sat upon the worn leather sofa in the very corner of the room. 

A pair of long pale slender legs appeared from a skirt hitched up high, around quietly elegant thighs. Their owner sat atop a person only evident by their dark jeans and their hands that clutched, palms flat, her back.

The girl turned startled her hair springing and tumbling across her shoulders in the movement, clutching her unbuttoned shirt tightly to her chest. She bit her bottom lip, an action that seemed entirely involuntary and painted with an urgent sort of shame; and to Frank that was a sweetly endearing act.

She was pretty... And Frank's first thought was one of congratulation to the lucky son of a bitch beneath...

"Errrm... I'm sorry," he mumbled awkwardly trying to free himself from the strange oppressive discomfort of the moment, somehow held still and transfixed by the nervous girl, and her intensity, that he was fleeing from.

A head emerged casually from behind the pale jutting shoulder of that girl. Deep black hair rippling lazily, hazel eyes tearing viciously through the gloom.

"No problem Frank..." Gerard's lips coolly returned. 

"But..." They sighed, seductive in their sadism, drawing out every possible second they could. "Can you close the door after you when you leave?"

Frank stood dumbly, his hand shaking behind him, still clutching the handle of the closed door, palms dampening to a sickening degree.

He felt numb as he nodded back, his face draining, the smooth metal below his fingers refusing to let him find a grip. Fumbling desperately, a sick panic rising, he mercifully got it to turn, despite spinning in his palm as it did.

He struggled to feel anything at all but total shock as he stepped backwards and out, pulling the door shut in front of eyes that felt like they'd been deceiving him.

And then he just stood there staring at the door, its crappy plastic star hanging limply by one nail. 'Surely that thing must be a joke?' Frank thought bemused; staying staunchly still, until that star was a mass of a blur in front of his eyes. A demonic entity growing less and less like its true self. 

Had he really seen it? And why not? Why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't Gerard be in there with someone else? Caressing hotly someone else's skin? Running his delicate fingers through the soft tangle of someone else's hair? Sighing sweet sentiments into someone else's ear?

Frank closed his eyes, clenching his fists tightly down by his sides, the blur of that absurd star still there... Like it'd penetrated his mind...

***

Frank felt the impact, through the haze of drink, as the world came rushing up to greet him and smashed violently into his face.

Felt the burn of a graze flash along his cheek, as dust clouded up around him, and callously stung at his eyes. He took an awful desperate inhalation of air, choked as dry earth coated his throat, crawled down to his lungs.

"And stay out," bellowed a burly voice from behind him, low and menacing, yet touched with the cynicism of a man that might have thrown out twenty more men like Frank that night.

His irritated eyes streaming Frank pulled himself up to sit in the dry filthy gravel, stared down at his palms, ripped open and raw, and stippled with small ugly stones.

Frank pulled in awful dry wrenching breaths, coughing and retching with the disgusting taste of earth on his tongue.

Wiping his eyes uselessly with the backs of his hands, Frank couldn't help but ask himself how he'd come to this. And really he knew the answer... One more drink he'd pleaded, knowing it had been one too many five ago... And he'd found no solace in the bottom of any of those glasses, as hard as he'd looked. Blinking through the eyes of a man lost in drink, he had however, seen Gerard's cutting, endless, gaze glare up at him from time to time, in the gleam of his whiskey glass, through the drunken haze of that night.

Looking down hopelessly at his knees he noted, without care or concern, that through a gapping tear in his jeans, one was exposed; a trickle and a smear of blood winking up at him, transmuting from crimson red into deep black in the moonlight.

He lifted his tear-streaked face up to the bruised, blackened, sky, the white hot pin pricks of stars spotted across it and felt so small beneath them.

Frank buried his face into the crook of his arm and gave in to the dizzying world behind his aching eyes; waited for the nausea swelling in him to die down.

"Come on Frank," he heard slicing through the night; as cool and crisp as the evening's air sweeping around him. "Let's get you back to the motel..."

***

Frank woke up in his room alone, a searing headache biting at him relentlessly, his stomach close to convulsions, his mouth dry and tasting of acrid stale smoke. Only the faintest flickers of memories from the night before seemed to surface and those that did only drove the lingering sickness in him further and further up his throat.

The last moment of the night before, that he remembered with any kind of clarity, was a hand reaching out to him through the blackness of night, as if it had just appeared out of the darkness, had no owner at all. A decimated version of himself before it, drowning in dust and intoxication.

He remembered everything like he was flicking through a photo album, little tableaux, disparate stills of the night before him, each countless hours apart, each disturbingly random and incongruous to the last.

The emotions were easier to recall, they clung upon him as if they were stains. Indelible sorrow, anger, pain and despair... And he ached. His whole body ached; and as he pulled himself up reluctantly in his bed his limbs screamed and resisted, protested loudly to him.

He touched two tentative fingers to his cheek and was greeted with the memory of being thrown headfirst out of the bar and into the unforgiving ground; the dust and gravel surrounding it rising up around him.

He threw off the bed sheets that somehow he knew someone had pulled up carefully around him, and bewildered, glanced down at his knee. As angry and torn as it looked, someone had washed it clean.


	5. C5 Heaven Help Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV change: Gerard

Gerard paced his room plagued by the grey clinical light of early morning that gathered at his window and crowded through the drapes.

There was something about that crisp stark light that made everything under it disturbingly real.

Everything he looked at he just wanted to turn away from...

Storming past his bags and cases, clothes already streaming messily out, he kicked them bitterly. They jostled together lazily, his holdall lurching forward spilling half its contents out over the rank dusty carpet. Their stubborn response just enraged him further. With a ferocity rising up from his gut, swelling and taking him over, he reached down and gathered up the holdall, and its contents, against his chest. Swinging back with all his strength and then shooting forward he flung them with everything he had across the room. Watched as they scattered and fell like acid rain and dead winter leaves tumbling from the skies.

His other cases and bags he kicked and kicked over and over until, his energy spent, he stood panting, his head bowed over the carnage of clothes and luggage beneath him. He wanted to scream but he couldn't, he just wanted to burst out into a desperate run, escape this, but he felt as if heavy shackles weighed him down. All options felt useless.

Finally, his heart thumping raggedly in his chest, he threw himself down on the rickety chair at the motel room's equally rickety table.

His chest heaving and his mind racing he let his hand wander, as if of its own will, to his jeans pocket. He pulled out a hastily folded piece of paper, along with the memory of himself kneeling inside the door of Frank's room, his friend in uneasy drunken sleep behind him, glancing anxiously back to him as he slid it into his pocket, trying to ignore what it meant that he wanted to take it.

Gerard smoothed his fingers over the crumpled paper as he laid it out carefully on the small cluttered table before him; took a deep breath out as his fingertips travelled across its cool surface. 

He felt his anger slowly die down as he began to read the words scrawled down before him. He read those words over and over until they were all that swam dizzyingly in his head. And when his eyes came to those beautiful terrible words 'I love you' they stopped stuck, until they blurred, morphed, into nothing. And although Gerard knew he had to stop this he just couldn't. 

Because reading them was torture, and yet not reading them was much the same... He asked himself how on the one hand he could wish them desperately not to be true and yet... He wanted so to believe them too...

"Frank..." He sighed absentmindedly to his empty room. And felt, with that name said aloud, the sudden realisation of what that truly meant hit him.

"Shit..." He whispered in angry, anguished, tones; his fingers curling involuntarily into his palm, taking the paper below their touch with them.


	6. C6 Heaven Help Us

Frank slid off the ridiculously large earphones he had on and placed them down, on the desk in the claustrophobic booth at the radio station, with a huge sense of relief. He blew out a deep calming breath as he stood and shook the outthrust hand of the smiling host; before Gerard reached out confidently, nonchalantly, across Frank and offered his own. Frank gritted his teeth, bit back the anger rising within him.

' _Arrogant jerk_ ,' his mind snapped. 

He just couldn't take the blasé attitude which Gerard could employ around him, the way he could brush his arm across Frank's shoulder and over his chest like everything was normal, like everything was okay. It said to Frank that to Gerard it was nothing to be around him.

Frank turned mutely on his heels and headed for the door, sensed Gerard's smiling figure behind him nodding to the station's DJ and following him out. He tried to swallow down his anger, felt it crack and splinter in his throat. Absorbed in his thoughts he simply nodded to the assistant that offered to show him out, his jaw aching with the tension freezing his muscles, forcing his teeth painfully together.

"Can't believe that guy actually asked you 'bout your face," Gerard laughed behind him, his voice bouncing around the long empty corridor they traversed. 

Frank almost winced at the memory of the question, how his heart had thumped and his stomach had lurched sickeningly in reaction; clenched his fists impotently at Gerard's little assault.

"Don't worry though," Gerard carried on through smiling lips that forced themselves evident into the words they formed. "You handled it well... You definitely got away with it."

As Frank came to the polished chrome and glass doors of the exit he imagined turning around slowly, his eyes glinting with the sweet taste of revenge, and swinging his balled up fist into Gerard's carefree laughing face. Instead he limply laid his uncomfortably damp palm against the cool surface of the door and pushed, pushed the door open and his pain and his anger away.

Silently stuffing a cigarette into his mouth Frank walked away from the radio station without another word; Gerard left in the wake of his retreating shadow, blinking dumbfounded at him, through the glare of the midday sun.

***

Frank listened to the low humming repetitive notes spilling out around and over the stage. They were rich and heavy and seemed to curl around his body, his limbs, reverberate against and in his chest.

Frank smiled at Mikey with his bass; how he managed to make it seem elegant under his hands. 

"Thanks man..." He said suddenly, glancing down shyly at his own guitar hung down on its strap and over his body.

"What for?" Mikey answered absentmindedly, moving his fingers along the thick strings beneath them, making them screech lightly in metallic tones as he did.

"You know... The other night... Outside the bar," Frank muttered staring down at his own fingers murmuring against his guitar's strings, making them almost imperceptibly knock against the frets. He couldn't make the fingers of his other hand, plectrum within them, strum the strings below.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he muttered distractedly, concentrating on the slight yet expert twists that he made to his tuning pegs. "It wasn't me."

Frank's shaking fingers mapped out a chord, ghosted a strum.

"Ah... Don't worry. It's nothing," he mumbled down to the black hole his guitar had become, bringing his plectrum up to his mouth, securing it between his teeth; striking the backs of his fingers down over the strings, a dull pained note crashing out of the looming stacked speakers behind them and reaching his ears in a tumbling crescendo.

***

Frank watched as his third, and last, plectrum, spiralled away in free-fall, glinting under the heavy stage lights as it turned, as if it were all happening in slow motion. With each turn it winked up at him with a tiny flash of light streaking across its surface. He groped uselessly at thin air with fingers that shouldn't have been shaking, that were slick and unpleasant with sweat. 

With the booming rhythm of a drum beat thundering in his chest, the dull march of the bass winding around it, the roar of the crowd and Gerard's voice snaking all over him like arms and hands on his hips and waist, he turned the backs of his fingers to his strings almost without letting himself think. His pride made the decision for him. And felt nothing at all at first, as he let his mind get lost in the feel of the small beads of sweat that gathered on his brow and the way on stage all the sounds around him melded into one, became nothing but vibrations and sensations.

Ahead of him on stage Gerard, swathed in the harsh blinding glow of a spotlight, quivered and swayed like a sapling caught in the forceful violence of a hurricane. And, like he had a thousand times before, his black and white silhouette made its elegant way across the stage and towards Frank; who still torn and raging bit his lip in barely concealed frustration and trepidation. For the first time he felt the burn of the strings he strummed tearing into the backs of his fingers.

He resisted darting away as Gerard leant into him. And when Gerard sang against him, spilling his hot and rich melodies out and over his cheek, lingering by his shoulder, his exposed neck, in a way that he had once had the naivety to find beautiful and intoxicating, he could only find within those actions a taunting and possessive game.

Frank turned his face sharply away, in disgust, under the dominion of bitter thoughts. Closed his eyes and concentrated on the slow burning pain in his fingers, how they suddenly cooled as he felt a wetness run down them, that he knew even through the deep red haze of anguished angry thoughts must be his own blood. He cut off all things but that dull pain, the slow meandering of blood down his fingers, as Gerard ground his hips suggestively against him.

But it was no good... Nothing can distract you from the heat of hell. And when Gerard curled his fingers into Frank's hair, that gleamed with sweat, he couldn't block any of it out. The memories of his motel room in a moment that felt years ago, the sensation of Gerard desperately tangling his shaking fingers up into his hair, locking his lips tightly against his own, came rushing back, a silent and savage attack.

Still playing Frank broke away from those domineering hands; glanced back at Gerard's devastating eyes, his viciously saccharine grin.

***

Frank popped the cap off a bottle of beer against the tired edge of the fold-up table in their dressing room; raised his hand out to Mikey's that was offered up in the air. Was proud of the convincing smile he sported as he returned his high-five.

"You're crazy," Mikey laughed; the fingers of his other hand grazing over the beer bottles on the table as he selected one of the many laid out there.

"Gotta admire the dedication," he joked slapping Frank warmly on the back.

Frank smiled back to his friend, tried to convey a look of embarrassed modesty, anything to get him off the subject, make him stop. He didn't feel proud as he looked down at the torn skin across his fingers, the dried blood that had turned an ugly shade of blackish-red. 

And then there was Gerard, even from across the room he could feel his eyes on him, all over him. He could feel the anger pouring off him, flooding into the room in an angry black tangle, inching its way closer, threatening to reach him, work its way up his body and wrap its way around his hopelessly expectant throat.

"Thanks man," Frank replied tilting his bottle towards Mikey, clinking their bottles together, before raising it to his lips and taking a gulp that he hoped didn't look as desperate as it felt.

And could the other guys feel the tension rippling between them?

Frank kept his eyes low and his face in check as he and Mikey headed over to, and settled, on the battered and stained old sofa in the room, drank their 'rider' beers until there were none left, a mess of discarded caps and empty bottles around them.

***

As the hours passed by the guys all slowly dropped out until Frank was left alone with the empty room and his racing ugly thoughts.

He lit his last cigarette and threw the empty box to the floor; didn't even hear someone coming in the door, just saw the shadows cast messily across his lap. He knew who it'd be. Didn't look up.

"Congratulations man...You're our hero huh?"

Frank stared at the cigarette burning quietly in his hand, he didn't need to look up to Gerard, he could hear the bitterness and anger in his voice.

"Saved the show by... Doing that," he spat with vitriolic force. "Problem is, it was your fault in the first place. You just saved your own fuck up."

Frank guessed Gerard must've pointed down to his hand, that he stared glumly at himself.

"What's this really about Gerard?" He sighed, not really having to ask.

He was so tired of all this, Gerard's deflections, his hidden agendas, but resigned himself to the fact that it was pointless trying to avoid them.

He looked up and, despite himself, it pained him to see Gerard so mixed up, lost in the wild emotions that raged across the glittering surface of his eyes.

Rubbing his own, fatigue and alcohol pulling him toward sleep, Frank stood to face Gerard, trying to conjure something like defiance.

"That shit you pulled out there... Walking away from me... The fans expect us..."

"They expect nothing," Frank cut in. "This isn't about them."

Frank wasn't even angry with Gerard anymore, he couldn't bring it into his voice or force it onto his face. He just wanted this all to stop and, inexplicably, he just wanted Gerard to be okay.

"This is about you Gerard... It's always been about you..." He sighed taking a slow grateful drag on his cigarette, wincing at the mess that was his fingers, somehow ashamed of them completely.

"It is... They come to our shows... They come and..." Gerard stopped dead, his head dropping down, his hair tumbling lazily, somehow out of sink with the moment it resided in, obscured the pained expression Frank knew must be there. Gerard's lies, his delusions, were falling apart, falling away from him.

Frank stepped forward uncertainly, slowly, and placed his hand, an attempt at comfort, on one of Gerard's hunched over shoulders, felt him flinch under his touch.

"You made me look so fucking stupid," Gerard ragged down to his chest; blew out a long breath that made his hair jump and dance under its force.

After, what seemed to Frank like hours of stillness, of silence, Gerard raised his eyes slowly to his, and it shocked him how hurt and distant they looked.

Gerard shrugged Frank's hand off his shoulder in one resentful movement.

"You..." Gerard stopped as if struggling against himself. "You walked away from me and it hurt... It hurt so fucking bad."

Frank opened his lips to speak, to say what he'd already forgotten by the time Gerard's own crashed violently into them, when Gerard's fingers curled possessively around his face.

Frank sighed into those lips and let his cigarette fall to the floor, just to return that gesture, feel the curve of his friends cheeks below his fingertips.


	7. C7 Heaven Help Us

Fighting every cell in his body, that fought and roared and tore against him, Frank pulled away from their kiss. Their sweetly intense kiss that clawed and pulled back and didn't want to let him go. Away from Gerard's fingers that couldn't stop their frantic searching across the fabric of Frank's jeans, fingers that would for moments curl despondently around his hips.

It should have been everything he wanted, but everything in this felt wrong, everything in this felt about roar physical need. And somehow Frank couldn't bring himself to have this end as just that once more. He couldn't stand to feel used by someone that meant so much to him, not again.

Finally free of Gerard's disconsolate lips Frank stayed panting uselessly against him, still with those fingers clutching him, his body unbearably close.

Frank registered the moment of panic and rejection that flashed in Gerard's eyes, the alarm as he snaked his arms up and around Frank's waist and pulled him desperately closer. 

Fighting the reality and understanding between them Gerard pressed his lips down tenderly against the curve of Frank's neck, that was frozen between compliance and resistance.

Frank squeezed Gerard's shoulders tightly and with his shuddering breath caressing his cheek, he whispered desolately into his ear, "Gerard... This... It has to stop."

***

Frank had watched Gerard's retreating silhouette, illuminated all around by the light beyond the dressing room door, with eyes that blurred bitterly.

He hadn't wanted for him to go, he'd wanted Gerard to stay and face this.

And standing there with his own heart cradled pathetically in his hands he'd hoped for Gerard to turn around and help him.

Words were lost in the crush in his throat and all he wanted to do was call out to him and explain.

Gerard paused by the door and for moments Frank thought it could be okay, that he would stay and fix this, but he just searched in his pockets, pulled out a woefully crumpled and stained piece of paper and laid it decorously on the seat of the chair by the door.

"I love you Gerard," Frank chocked out. "But it just... It has to be more than this... I want more than this..."

But Gerard wouldn't let him finish, as the door cut Frank's desperation off in one awful bitter slam.

***

Frank sank to his knees, his cheek cooling against the hard wooden grain of the dressing room's door, his note to Gerard once again clutched disconsolately in his trembling fingers, like a nocuous terrible talisman.

And he just kept asking himself why was it so hard with Gerard, what was it about this that wanted to destroy itself so easily, so completely?

Frank's hurt was an ugly tangible thing crouching within him as he slammed his already scarred fist into the surface of the door he leant against, and the only thing he felt was the relief of a hurt, if only for a moment, that was greater than the one throbbing inside his heart.

***

Gerard felt the boom and echo behind his head, of a blow meeting with the other side of the door that he leant hopelessly against.

Sitting there he just couldn't figure out what he was supposed to have done, he'd thought it was what Frank had wanted when he'd let go and crashed his lips longingly into his friend's.

And it felt glorious for moments, letting go, giving in; taking what he desired with no thought for the consequences, the shattering repercussions that were bound to come tumbling down. He'd done it and there was just no room for the usual wrenching doubts that had always plagued his mind.

And when Frank had pulled away; the confusion, the hurt, it was like the fiercest blow, it wounded and winded and it took him back to that stage hours before, the eyes of hundreds upon him as Frank turned away.

And then, in that room, when Frank gave him the opportunity to walk away, he'd taken it gladly in many ways. Because staying just felt too hard, too dangerous.

Drowning, choking, in memories Gerard curled himself further into a ball, taking perverse comfort in how small he could make himself; greeting the cool surface of the door as it bit gently against his cheek, the sensation mixing with the warm tear that rolled down and felt like it shouldn't be there encroaching on that moment.

He brought his fingers up and laid them outstretched against the inches of door by his head; and felt stupidly like somehow he was reaching back into the moment he had caught Frank's lips in his own.

"I'm sorry," he whispered to that closed threshold and for a moment he thought he'd heard his sentiment returned, seeping through the crack in the bottom of the door, in total unison, in the low tones of Frank's voice.

Sighing Gerard gathered himself off the floor and let his pride start his retreat down the shadow blackened hall.

And yet as he did he couldn't stop his mind replaying the moment his lips had met Frank's, just how warm they felt; of the sensation of their bodies clashing carelessly, embroiled in an event that had made regard obsolete. 

He plunged himself so deeply into recalling every second of those events that he failed to hear the door open behind him, didn't register the frantic footsteps drawing closer. Just felt suddenly Frank's fingers wrap recklessly around his arm and pull him back.

And when Frank's lips came up to his own he greeted them in shock and in burning gratitude.

Unabashed and unashamed he pulled the other man tightly against his chest, clutching his back with hands that could only manage to tremble.

And this time when Frank pulled away it was to stare with a soft ferocity in his eyes and to shine up a hope filled smile.

"You know Gerard... Whatever this is... It really doesn't matter... Because I... Christ, I just want you. And I don't care what that means. Just... Fuck... Just say you want this too," Frank implored to him with a tender urgency.

Conflicted Gerard looked away, his mind reeling and racing dizzyingly, he hated himself for the fact that it was so hard to say it. But it just was... Like he'd be weakened for it.

His eyes burning a hole into the cracked linoleum below them he nodded gently, hoped somehow that that would be enough for them both.

***


	8. Heaven Help Us C8

"Come on..." Frank smiled, sliding his hand down Gerard's arm to curl his fingers shyly amongst his friend's. 

A mischievous and ever so slightly embarrassed smile bloomed out from his lips and across his face as he gingerly led Gerard back down the hall and towards their dressing room once again.

It didn't matter to him that Gerard hadn't suddenly opened up, suddenly confessed an undying love for him, because he knew Gerard, how desperately vulnerable he seemed to feel revealing any kind of feelings. 

Frank squeezed Gerard's fingers lightly, that were still laced amongst his own, in response to the thought, a private act of tenderness towards his friend's frailties.

Finally back through the door they stood opposite each other exchanging shy smiles. Standing there Frank was sure that Gerard would see that he couldn't quite quiet his disbelief.

Frank wrapped his palm, with an anxious urgency, around the side of Gerard's neck. It was as if, he didn't do this now, he was certain Gerard would turn and run. Couldn't suppress an affectionate smile as Gerard's eyes snapped down to gaze at the floor in response to his touch. 

Frank pulled Gerard closer, let his lips gently crash into his friend's, felt so many things in that moment, so that relief, joy and need felt like one sensation. And for a moment registered Gerard turn limp under his touch before, embroiled in his urgency, he wrapped his shaking hands around Frank's shoulders and pushed back. 

Frank's shoulder blades met with the surface of the door behind them with a dull thud as a low groan fell from his lips and into his friend's mouth.

There was something loving and honest in how desperate their actions had become, Frank felt something wonderful there in the depths of their recklessness.

Frank snatched the edges of Gerard's t-shirt and pulled it roughly over his head. Claimed Gerard's neck carelessly with his lips and littered it with hot ardent kisses, his hands wrapped tightly around the edges of his friend's waist.

Frank felt the muscles in Gerard's neck tense as he threw his head back; listened entranced to the harsh heavy breaths thundering up through that throat.

And somehow it was like they were doing this for the first time. And Frank knew it was because it, this, was different. There was lust, there was urgency; but it was an urgency to do something they had until this moment denied themselves, denied each other. This was total, love-filled abandon. And it was honest and it was hectic and it was pure.

Gerard prized himself from Frank's frantic lips, his heavy embrace, and pulled his friend's shirt exultantly over his head. Shone a grin that cut through the air as it left him and greeted his friend's skin with hands that acted as if they'd stumbled across something infinitely wonderful, fragile and holy.

In unison they grasped each other's belt buckles, staring into their opposite's eyes with a quiet burning intensity, that spoke of a thousand moments and deeds that they told the other they'd soon have. 

And when Gerard's lips returned to his it shocked Frank how much he realised he had missed them in the moments before. How it only felt natural that they should always be there upon his.

Frank slid his fingers brazenly into Gerard's unbuttoned jeans, let them skim leisurely over his friend and enjoyed reaping the resulting sounds, a thousand tiny little reverberations humming against his lips and his tongue as, pressed together with Gerard's, they stifled a groan. 

And when Gerard wrenched his lips away from Frank's it was to kneel before him with a smile and a look that he swore could've moved mountains.

Frank bent slightly to graze his fingers across Gerard's cheek as he watched him ease down his boxers with hands that were nervous and shy but determined.

Gerard held his lip under his teeth lightly, the only show of just how awkward he felt in this; how being so brazen, giving over to his desire, made him feel so completely exposed and relentlessly unsure.

"You don't have to do this..." Frank began before he was silenced by his friend taking the whole of him into his mouth, teasing his tongue over the surface as he did.

Frank moaned up to the nicotine-stained ceiling, that was yellowing and ugly but was to him transmuted by the pleasure and relief that seemed to fill him and flow out and by its nature made everything seem unreal.

For as long as he could Frank stood upright, inched his fingers up tenderly into Gerard's soft tangled hair; in spite of his knees that felt like they'd buckle under the weight of his desire. Held out until they just wouldn't hold him anymore, until he had to lean back, his shoulder blades connecting once more with the door behind him, his breaths shuddering in his chest and turning to groans as they tore out of his throat. 

His fingers lost the comfort of Gerard's hair and lingered longingly in the space between them. Frank couldn't find what to do with his hands even as little quakes of pleasure ran through him like earthquakes and tremors. They longed for the comfort of Gerard's desire warmed skin, the feeling of another person beneath them.

Not that it really mattered anymore when he found himself on the edge of climax, when that building need for relief, for release, grew by the second. 

And he felt like he should say something but no words would come to him as he got lost in the sensations rippling.

Gerard gripped Frank's hips hard, did something with his tongue that Frank tried to understand before all thoughts became obsolete in the thralls of his climax.

Frank heard himself cry in release but it was like it wasn't him, like someone else was screaming recklessly into his ears.

For moments he just leant uselessly against the door behind, panting quietly with his eyes closed, riding the waves of little tremors and aftermaths that shook him. Before, finally free, he pulled up his jeans and buckled them, shirtless and glowing and satisfied for the first time in years.

Frank looked down at Gerard who was smiling deeply, staring up at him from the floor, his cheeks flushed pink. He offered his hand down and pulled Gerard up towards himself, gathered him up in his arms and let their bodies fall into each other carelessly.

And over the deep harsh breaths that fell out, unkempt and wilfully, over Gerard's shoulder, Frank swore he heard him whisper _'I love you'_ into the warm depths of his neck.


End file.
